


He with thee doth bear a part

by Idris388



Series: To me, fair friend [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Best Friends, Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Goodbyes, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), letting go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 13:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19063966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idris388/pseuds/Idris388
Summary: "He closed his eyes. Tipped his face back to the light. Supersoldier and spy. Grief. Monsters. Madness. Two men under a lonely sky, who’d lost a friend."(In the days that come afterwards, Clint grants the final wish of his oldest friend.)





	He with thee doth bear a part

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame
> 
> Title of the series and of the story both belong to the Bard himself - a master of tragedy and time, if there ever were one.

He that is thy friend indeed,

He will help thee in thy need:

If thou sorrow, he will weep;

If thou wake, he cannot sleep:

Thus of every grief in heart

He with thee doth bear a part.

These are certain signs to know

Faithful friend from flattering foe.

~William Shakespeare, "The Passionate Pilgrim"

* * *

 

He knelt, and he cried, and after they carried Tony’s body away, he hitched a portal into the city and rang Laura from a payphone.

There weren’t any brief ways to tell the story, but he explained some of it to her as quickly as he could – Wong was still standing, waiting for him outside the tiny phone box – the Infinity gauntlet, Thanos, time travel, yes, he was alright. There was noise, so much noise, in the city. Music, traffic, shouting, confusion, joy. Twice of everything, which made his heart sing and his head buzz with hurt.

He could hear the kids in the background, voices all tumbling over each other. Hearing them, hearing Laura released an ache in his chest; something else had replaced it now. “I’ll call you soon,” he promised. “Real soon.”

“I love you,” she said. “And I’m so happy that we’re all ok.”

When he hung up the phone, he saw that where he had gripped the phone, he had left a crimson, bloody handprint.

* * *

Wong took him to a brownstone in Brooklyn, and then disappeared with a perfunctory goodbye and no explanation. Clint frowned at the door – nondescript, chestnut brown, house number _107_ above the door in curling gold letters. At last, there was a shuffling noise and the sound of several bolts scraped back, (Clint’s hand went instinctively, surreptitiously to his quiver) and the door opened to reveal the weary face of Steve Rogers.

Steve did not look the least bit surprised; only gave him a smile of tired welcome. “Cap?” Clint said, his brain racing to catch up.

“Hi, Clint,” Steve said quietly. “Come on in.”

His boots were covered in blood and dust, so he tried to take them off in the vestibule, but Steve waved him gently through. “There’s food in the kitchen, and spare clothes upstairs,” he was saying. “The others are in the dining room, which is at the back of the house, but there are showers -“

The part of his brain that was listening to Steve filed away the _others_ concept, but the rest was too busy admiring the house. The floor panelling was smooth dark wood, and there was an ornate fireplace set into the wall, with an enormous watercolour painting hung above it. Furniture was sparse – several armchairs here, a lamp there – and Clint looked around and understood – “You live here, don’t you?”

Steve looked part embarrassed, part pleased. “I do.”

“Well, it’s beautiful.” That, with his builder’s eye.

“Thank you,” Steve said, his voice warming a little. They hadn’t moved more than five steps into the hallway.

“Nice painting, too,” Clint said. His thoughts were firing a little randomly. “Laura would love to have something like that at home.”

Steve chuckled. “I’ll do one for her.”

Clint stared. “You _painted_ that?” Steve rubbed his hands together awkwardly. “Is there anything you _can’t_ do?”

Steve smiled back. “My ma used to make a great lamb stew.” He shrugged. “Can’t seem to crack it.”

Clint laughed outright at that – it felt strange, and good, and awful – and peered further into the house. The window sills were painted relatively freshly, and Steve could have done that too, Clint supposed, but the bookshelves that had been installed were new, and the light fixtures too, and a hundred other things that had probably been a massive renovation, and – “Man, how did you _afford_ this?” he asked.

This time, there was no answer, and when he looked over, Steve was staring at the floor with his jaw clenched. Something behind Clint’s breastbone, that new thing, that ache, pulled so hard that he winced as he understood the answer.

 _Tony_.

The levity, their stolen moment of normalcy, vanished so quickly that it weakened Clint’s knees; bruised his airways on its rush out. Steve took a deep breath.

“Come with me. I’ll show you where you can put your weapons.”

* * *

 

He cleaned up, and put on the spare clothes that Steve had left for him, then sat down hard on the edge of the pristine white tub and stared at the tiles.

Downstairs, he could hear the _others_. Sam Wilson, who would be leaving for DC in a few days’ time; Bucky Barnes, who was apparently no longer a fugitive because as if that would even matter anymore; Wanda, who looked both lost and found somehow.

He had no idea where everyone else was, but he assumed that they all had their own homes to go to, and their own families to celebrate with. Clint wondered vaguely why Wong had brought him to Steve, instead of to his own family, until he remembered that nobody even _knew_ about his family, nobody but the people in this house, and –

He cut off mid-thought harshly, biting down on his tongue until he tasted blood. _Compartmentalise, Clint_ , a teasing voice said, lilting and light. _Don’t let it get inside your head_.

“Too late,” Clint said aloud, then flinched with a real, solid voice spoke back.

“Clint?” And it was Steve again, calling through the bathroom door. “Are you alright?”

In answer, Clint made himself stand, raked a hand through his hair and flung the door open so the steam from the shower drifted out into the hallway. Steve’s blue eyes were relieved, were concerned, were sympathetic. “Come and have some food,” he said, and Clint followed him down the staircase, a familiar laugh floating behind him like a summertime dream.

_You’re already in my head._

* * *

Sam Wilson, it turned out, made a mean sandwich.

Clint took his with sliced pork, ham, cheese and pickles. “That’s called a Cubano, man,” Sam said, looking slightly absurd with an apron, stirring vegetables in the frying pan. “Pretty sure you didn’t invent that.”

Wanda wanted to know about Americans and sandwiches, and Sam made a joke, and they were chatting, and Clint looked across at Steve who was half-smiling around a mug of tea. “Cap,” he muttered quietly. They were the only two at the kitchen island, and the chatter was getting louder and louder. Steve glanced over at Clint, one eyebrow lifted. “Why am I here?”

Steve looked momentarily disarmed.

“Not that I’m ungrateful,” Clint continued in that low tone. “I am. I’m very grateful that I don’t have to go home to my family bloodied and beaten up. But do you-“ He broke off before he could say _do you need me for something_ because that did sound ungrateful, and also slightly paranoid.

Steve’s face softened into something like understanding. “Clint, no,” he replied. Sam had finished with the vegetables and started frying the pork. Wanda had hopped up and was helping to spread cheese over the bread. “I know you want to be home, but I thought you might want to…to recuperate first.” He paused; put down his mug. “To deal with…some things.”

It wasn’t like Cap to hesitate over his speech, Clint noted distantly. _He’s trying to be sensitive_ , her voice said.

“Thanks,” Clint said. “I’ll only be in your hair for a few days.” Steve looked a little unsure, and what did it say about the man that he looked more nervous now than he ever did during battle? Clint let out a sigh. He had been chosen, all those years ago, because he could see the cracks in people. There were fractures here, surely, that might be too deep to heal. _Be nice, Clint_.

But being nice was too hard a chore, even if it was for her, so he said instead, “Hey, how’s your cell reception?”

* * *

 

He made good on his promise to Laura in Steve’s little garden, lying on the square of grass and staring up as leaves fluttered down around him. There was a silence on the other side of the phone. Then – “Oh, Clint.” Laura’s voice was shaky. “Honey, I’m so, so sorry.”

“They did it for us,” Clint said. He was sure he’d cried, when it had happened, when he had told the others, upstairs in the shower, but he couldn’t remember exactly. “Tony, for all of us. So we could win. And Nat…” He broke off.

“Sweetheart-“

“I’ll tell the kids,” he said abruptly. “You shouldn’t have to-“

“Don’t be silly,” she said wetly, then sniffed. “You’re going through enough. I’ll tell them.” She sniffed again. “You’ll screw it up anyway, then they’ll be traumatised for life.” Clint chuckled despite himself. She was a woman of steel and softness, and it was why he loved her. Nat, too.

“Thank you.”

“Come home soon,” she requested.

It was there already, since Bruce had used the gauntlet to bring them back – that longing to be in her arms, bathed in that country glow, the kids laughing around the porch, or in the garden. “Soon,” he promised. “Real soon. I just…I need some time…”

Laura was quiet for a second. “Are you doing ok? Tell me the truth.”

Clint didn’t know what to say to this. “Don’t know what I’m going to do without her,” he admitted finally.

Laura sighed. “Me neither.”

“Clint,” came a voice somewhere to his right, and he rose fluidly to his feet automatically, eyes darting around to search for – “Clint, it’s me.”

Laura’s voice was coming down the phone line, calling his name repeatedly. “It’s fine,” he replied to her, his gaze unmoving.  “Just Cap.”

“Ok,” Laura said. He heard the relief in her voice. “You should go. Say hi to him for me. And that I’m sorry.” She paused. “And tell him thank you.”

She hung up and Clint missed her immediately. “Laura says-“

“I heard,” Steve replied. Figured.

“Do we gotta go –“ But there was nothing else for them to do, Clint remembered.

“There’s nothing,” Steve confirmed with a twisting smile. “I just wanted to talk.”

Clint knew exactly what about. “Ain’t exactly my strong point, Cap.”

Steve sighed, relaxed his stance and leant easily against the tree trunk. “I know. It’s not any of ours. But we should.”

Clint shrugged. “So, talk.” He realised this was somewhat rude – _Be nice, Clint_ – but it was hard, so hard.

Steve nodded. Swallowed. “It’s just that you were there-“

“I already told you how it happened,” Clint replied. He clenched his phone until the edges hurt against his flesh. Steve’s eyes flickered down towards it, and blinked slowly.

“That’s not what I – I just meant that me, Thor, Bruce…even Wanda, even T’Challa, even Scott…we all miss her. Tony did too. But you…” He trailed off, and Clint had the mad urge to laugh. He let his knees unlock, his muscles unwind, sliding to the leaf-covered earth, spreading his fingers over the foliage. Steve looked momentarily alarmed, but Clint waved a hand at him.

“Nat admired you,” he told Steve, who switched to stare down at his feet, at his folded arms. “Not that she would ever have told you; at least not with words. For years and years, I was her only friend. You changed everything.”

Steve shuffled slightly. “You were always-“

Once again, Clint felt like laughing. “It’s not _jealousy_ ,” he said. “I think we’re all above that by now.”

Steve said, embarrassed, “I know.”

Clint closed his eyes. Tipped his face back to the light. Supersoldier and spy. Grief. Monsters. Madness. Two men under a lonely sky, who’d lost a friend. “Nat loved you,” he said, and his voice was a little hoarse. He didn’t open his eyes to see Steve’s expression. “Like I said, you changed everything. You changed her. For the better.”

“You’re giving me too much credit.”

“Cap, does that really sound like me?”

Steve made a noise of amusement. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

It had been hard to start, but it was easier to go on. “Nat didn’t give her trust easily. Not difficult to understand why, after the life she had. But she trusted you.”

Steve didn’t answer for a long time. Clint didn’t open his eyes. The shirt was soft against his skin, the afternoon Sun warm on his eyelids. It was difficult to fathom that it had all happened so recently. He couldn’t even remember the time he was asleep. “I was honoured,” came the reply at last. “I still am.”

Clint smiled. “So am I.”

A gentle breeze stirred, and rustled the leaves. “She was our heart,” Steve said abruptly. “The Avengers. She was our heart.”

Clint felt another laugh rise, and this time, he let it free. It was surprisingly genuine. “She was kind of our brain, too.”

Steve laughed as well. Free of bile and bitterness. “That she was.”

 _Clint_ , Natasha’s voice, because of course it was her voice who spoke, _let him help you._ Clint wished he knew how.

Steve was winding up. Deep breath in. “We were her family. Us. All of us. But you before anyone else.” Clint said nothing. Didn’t move a muscle. “You were the first. You brought her in. You made her good long before I came along.” Then, in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry, Clint.”

“I would,” Clint said, even softer, “have done anything for her.”

“She would have done the same.”

 _It’s ok_ , she said. _Let me go_.

“She did,” Clint said, then fell silent.

* * *

 

Sam spent the entire day teaching Wanda about American franchise food, even though she had lived in the country for years. Steve received a call from Bleeker Street the next morning – the wizard Strange was offering portals home for everyone when they were ready.

He should go, Clint knew, but he wasn’t ready. Wanda asked him why, and Clint couldn’t tell her the truth; that once he left them and went home, once he wasn’t with the _Avengers_ anymore, Nat would be gone too; gone for real. So he read his way through Steve’s entire shelf on political theory, much to Steve’s surprise, (“They don’t just let _anyone_ become international spies, Cap; you have to be at least a bit intelligent.”) and lay in the garden looking up at the sky.

Barnes was mostly quiet, which was strangely comforting to Clint. They read together in the evening, Clint in English and Barnes in Russian. Steve lit the fire, and it crackled in a dreamy, winter way. Barnes turned a page, shifted slightly, then looked up. “She was your best friend, wasn’t she?”

Clint didn’t look away from his page. “Yeah.”

He felt Barnes’ head turn towards the kitchen, where Steve was wiping at the counter tops. Cap had torn the Avengers apart for Barnes. Nat had died for Clint. It was terrible poetry. No rhyme, minimal scansion, with an end that left you grasping for the words. Grasping for something that wasn’t there. “I’m sorry. She was a good person.”

This made Clint frown. He rifled through his memories, trying to remember whether Natasha had ever said anything about Barnes, but he drew a sudden blank. But there was something, something he wasn’t seeing. “Did you know her?” he asked, but Barnes turned another page and didn’t say a word.

* * *

 He called Laura the next day, the third day, spoke a little to the kids, and said, “Soon. Today. Maybe tomorrow.”

Laura gave him the same answer she always did. “You do what you need to do.” Then she added hesitantly, “Should we arrange something? A service?”

Clint put the mug down on the counter and leaned his forehead against the cupboard door, suddenly awash with grief. “No,” he said finally. “There’s no body.”

Laura said, gently, “We don’t need her body to have a service.”

“Nat didn’t believe in God.”

“She believed in something, though.”

 _Us_ , Clint thought.

* * *

That day, Sam went home to DC. He surprised Clint with a hug. “It doesn’t get easier quickly,” he said. “But we’re going to do them proud.”

Clint stared at him for a second, then hugged back. At breakfast, he asked Steve, “Who did he lose?”

“His best friend.”

Clint looked at them – at Steve and Bucky, who had found and lost each other so many times; at Wanda, whose brother had been taken from her far too young. What a group they were.

“It’s going around,” he said, and that, after a moment of silent shock, made Wanda giggle somewhat maniacally into her cereal.

* * *

“You got alcohol?” he asked Steve, who looked surprised. Clint hadn’t said much at all for the past few hours, although they were all collected in the dining room awkwardly.

“A bit. Probably some whiskey somewhere.”

“Well, I need liquor,” Clint said definitively. “And you’re going to have to help me home tonight, Mr. Can’t-Get-Drunk-Supersoldier.” He eyed Wanda speculatively, then Barnes too. “You’re probably all going to have to help me back here. That, or get trashed with me.”

“And why are we getting trashed?” Barnes asked, although a slight grin was curling around the edges of his mouth.

“Because,” Clint said, “my best friend is dead.” Then added, “And I’ve heard Russians like to drink.”

“That’s cultural appropriation,” Wanda said, starting to smile herself. “Natasha would hardly have approved.”

Clint’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, she’d have hit me over the head with a rock-hard loaf of bread.” He paused, and let a grin unfurl, natural, long, mischievous. “Why do you think I’m doing it?”

He looked towards Steve, for moral guidance or moral judgement or general assessment. But Steve only smiled a little too, and said, “I’ll get the vodka.”

* * *

“Are we going to say something?” Wanda asked. “Should we?”

They were sat at the edge of the pond in the public park. The setting Sun scattered shards of light over the water. Yellow for the summertime, orange for the Soul Stone, red for love, and for the colour of Natasha’s hair.

“Do you want to?” Clint asked. He was clasping a vodka bottle in a paper bag like a teenager. Barnes had his own. Wanda had a bottle of wine with a glass that Steve and Barnes had dug up for her at the store, because supersoldier and former assassin they might be, but they were 1940s gentlemen as well. Steve had a beer, although it wouldn’t do him a lot of good.

“I think so,” Wanda said quietly, then she started to speak. Clint couldn’t remember her exact words over the warmth of his blood and the rush of the stars coming out, but he did know that Wanda spoke warmly and with love, and that was what Natasha had wanted from her family.

When she was finished, Barnes spoke some words in quiet Russian. Clint tried to decipher some of it, but the vodka was settling into his veins. These Russians knew what they were about, Clint thought. Then he thought of Nat, and of how true that statement really was. “Steve?” Barnes was asking.

Steve cleared his throat. “We did it, Nat. We won. And we’re going to live our lives the way you would have wanted.” And he said, in a breaking voice, that he missed her, and that he loved her and thank you; that she had changed his life, when he got a second one after the ice. Then, he was crying, really crying, and Wanda put a hand on his shoulder and murmured reassuring words in a low tone, and it struck Clint how that would have been Nat’s job to comfort Steve, to keep him steady, to keep them all steady.

“Ah, Nat,” he said aloud, and he heard that his words didn’t slur, although his head felt somewhat light and dizzy.

They all turned to look at him. But what was there for him to say? She had meant more to him that he could ever express with words. She’d been beside him in battle and in life. Through every adventure.

"You were a pain in my ass,” he said aloud.

 _You,_ he thought hazily _, were my first partner_.

One day, this would all be a dream. Just a bedtime story for his kids. A fairytale about a redheaded ballerina, and the archer who rescued her from her captors. A thousand other stories about them rescuing each other, over and over again. And a last poet’s ending, where she rescued him one, final time.

Thanos, and the gauntlet, and the time travel – it was all just stories now. Steve lifting Thor’s hammer, that was a story too. Tony’s sacrifice. The glowing, spitting portals. The heroes fighting for earth. For each other. And for Nat, too. It had not just been battle, it had been bravery. Sorrow. Heartbreak. Love. A true story, with a true ending.

That poetry, back and forth. He was a truly terrible poet.

 _It’s ok. Let me go_.

She was always going to be with him, wherever he went.

Clint lifted his bottle up to her, to the stars.

“Natasha,” he said, voice clear in the night. Barnes and Wanda and Steve were all still watching him, silent sentinels. Family.

What a story this would be one day.

What a life.

“Oh, Nat,” he said, “you would have loved it.”


End file.
